Bret Easton Ellis tweeted last night, "I like the idea of Glee but why is it that every time I watch an episode I feel like I've stepped into a puddle of HIV?"

Excuse me?

No one from the Glee camp is commenting on the record this morning, but as one insider simply said, "Disgusting."

We couldn't agree more. Ellis' comparison is a vile throwback to the early days of the AIDS epidemic when conservative homophobes incited fear and bigotry by equating anything remotely gay to HIV and AIDS.

Ellis, who has more than 141,000 followers on Twitter, has said in the past that he doesn't identify as gay or straight.

Then again, should we even be that surprised by Ellis' tweet?

In November, he took on the gay youth suicide prevention campaign "It Does Get Better." "Not to bum everyone out, but can we get a reality check here?" he posted. "It gets worse." Is comparing Glee to "a puddle of HIV" his way of assuring that?

Ellis declined to comment for this story—because I inadvertently spelled his first name with two t's in the subject line of the email I sent him.

I apologize for the error, but really? It's not like I said you reminded me of a puddle of HIV.